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Comment by StavrosK | Hacker News Reader

What complexity? The client pretty much only has one button, "send BitCoins".

How do I transfer my coins from one computer to another? I found digging through my application data to find the wallet.dat file is unintuitive.. along those same lines, how many less technical users have lost extremely important data because they never made a backup? Additionally what if I want one wallet so I can go to a physical store, and use my phone to pay? The shuffle seems very inefficient to me. Perhaps people could setup servers to host their own wallet... however that creates another barrier of entry to less technical users.

Look at this crazy shit: http://www.stronggames.com/bitcoin if I want to buy a game I have to somehow obtain 40 bitcoins (the markets are great for speculators, but its not 2 buttons simple for people who just want some coin) after I somehow obtain the bitcoins I need to tell them about it...

In the form that it is in today, this is a currency for geeks. Awesome? (hell yeah!) but sometimes you need to do business with non geeks, and its just not ready yet for them.

Baby steps.

Try starting out using an eWallet, such as MyBitcoin: http://www.mybitcoin.com

Then buy your Bitcoins with PayPal here: http://coinpal.ndrix.com use the bitcoin address generated at MyBitcoin. You'll get your bitcoins in less than an hour at MyBitcoin.

Then those bitcoins can be spent using your example, at StrongGames.

So if I put my bitcons on MyBitcoin.com, I'm under the impression that they have complete control over my wallet. Just like if I gave my wallet to someone and asked them to please accept payments on my behalf. Correct? That's an awful lot of trust to put in a random website. If they decide to run the website until they are sitting on enough coins and then just transfer them to themselves, is any court going to believe me when I claim they stole my money??

The fundamental problem I have with Bitcoin web transactions is that it requires trusting the other party, since I can't exchange the goods at the same time. How do I make that determination and what recourse do I have if I'm defrauded? This would seem to be the fundamental obstacle to adoption to me.

My understanding is that every bitcoin contains the entire block chain which contains a record of every transaction made in the network.

A transaction is basically three pieces of data: private key signature of the sender/payer, public key of the receiver/payee, amount of bitcoins.

The blockchain is very difficult to counterfeit, so theoretically a site like MyBitcoin.com can't actually 'control' your wallet or transfer all the bitcoins to themselves, at least without all the private keys of their depositors.

I just installed the bitcoin software and bought some bitcoins at your link and I got this email:

"...If the block count in your client matches the one shown at bitcoinwatch.com, your client should already show the transaction. Otherwise, wait for the two block counts to match..."

My block count says 51,486 but the one at bitcoinwatch.com is over 100,000. Why aren't they the same? Will they be?

Yes, because you have only recently installed it will take time for your client to download all the current blocks.

Thanks! this actually answers many of my questions.

> How do I transfer my coins from one computer to another?

You just send the coins to your other computer.

> how many less technical users have lost extremely important data because they never made a backup?

How many people have lost their wallets?

> I want to buy a game I have to somehow...

That's just because that form is the equivalent of "PayPal us some money then tell us about it".

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